The Japanese event called Otsukimi

Dear our valuable customers,

We hope you are doing well. Here in Kagoshima, the climate is still hot and humid during the day time in September. However, with cool winds in the evening or early morning, we can smell autumn season in the air gradually.

In Japan, there is an event that really makes you feel the autumn. Have you ever heard of the word “Otsukimi”? It is a traditional Japanese event that usually takes place in September or October, celebrating the autumn full moon. The kanji for “Otsukimi” is “looking at the moon”. As this says, it is an event to appreciate the beautiful full moon, but it is not just that. Originally, it was an event to give thanks for the safe harvest of autumn crops. In some regions, there is a custom of children going around the neighborhood to get sweets and other things. I remember when I was little, I would go around the neighborhood with a big bag and come home with a bag full of sweets. It is an event that is just like Halloween. We don’t wear costumes, though…

＼Adjusting the tea to the season’s taste／
You might know that people’s sense of taste changes by season. For example, in a hot season is preferred light, refreshed, crisp taste, on the other hand, cool or cold season is preferred thick, strong, roasted flavor. Kagoshima Seicha‘ｓ tea master or artisans to manufacture finished tea from Aracha (semi-finished tea), they are very careful to manage for blending and burner’s temperature for roasting not only the kind and type of tea, but also, the consumer’s sense of taste which is changed by the seasons accordingly. Moreover, they are also considering about humid and temperature of the manufacturing day. We do many assessing processes through the manufacture in our factory.

In this newsletter, we introduced Japanese seasonal event. While we appreciate nature, tea fields, tea farmers, we try to manufacture tea for adjusting the tea characteristics itself also the taste or fragrance changing by season accordingly. Thank you for reading.